Jim’s War

“I think the Services can be rightly very upset at the continuous series of defence reviews which the Government has been forced by economic circumstances—and maybe economic mistakes too—to carry out…”

Rt. Hon Denis Healey MP, Secretary of State for Defence 1964-1970

Jim

Alphen, Netherlands. 25 July. His name is Jim. Jim is British. He is also an experienced non-commissioned officer in the British Army. Still, given Jim’s story, he could also be called Francois, Jeroen, Jurgen or increasingly Heidi, Karin or Yvette.  Jim has twenty years’ service to his name and is the backbone of the force of which he is part. Year after year of defence cuts have left Jim the only survivor of the little band of brothers which whom he served in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some were killed, others invalided out, but most simply left for better jobs in ‘Civvy Street’. On many occasions, Jim has thought about following them. Even though his wife has to work to make ends meet and the Ministry of Defence housing inflicted on his family is falling apart consumed by damp and faulty plumbing, as a member of the poor bloody infantry the time never seemed quite right.

A couple of years ago Jim received a modest pay rise which did little to offset the years of Whitehall imposed pay restraint.  Year after year Jim has heard his senior commanders promise new equipment and new investment, but somehow it never came to pass. When it did the ‘kit’ on offer did little to convince Jim and his mates that in a full-on firefight with an enemy which knew its business they would last very long.  Behind the shiny metal things London liked to show to give the impression the British Army was still a fighting force to be reckoned with there was Jim’s reality. Jim’s reality was endless reviews with shiny names like Army 2020 but which in fact always meant the same thing of making do with what was available, coping with never enough spares, far too little ammunition and even less training and exercising because it was deemed too expensive by the budgeteers.

Still, to Jim and his mates the budgeteers were not the real enemy. They were the ‘fuckwit’ politicians who in one breath would announce that Britain had the finest armed forces in the world, then in another breath announce yet further cuts.  The latest round of cuts had gone under the wonderfully euphemistic name of the ‘Defence Modernisation Programme’ which as far as Jim could see threatened to ‘modernise’ the British Army’s spearhead out of existence. Perhaps that was the aim. At times Jim thought he was part of an armed aid delivery service rather than the cutting edge of a fighting force so capable its very existence would deter any enemy.

Jim would admit that once he had looked down a bit on his colleagues in other European forces. They were not THE British Army with its fighting traditions and ‘can do’ ethos.  They were Bonsai militaries full of part-timers playing at soldiers led by politicians who seemed to believe everything could be left to the Americans. The British, Jim thought, were different.  Britain would always fight and if he and his mates were to die doing it they would do so knowing that at least his commanders and London had their backs.  Not anymore.

Britain it seems was just like any other strategically-detached European country led by weak politicians surrounded by think tanks and policy lobbyists hell bent on convincing these kings and queens of the short-term that defence was passé and that the defence budget was little more than a reserve cash cow to fund the National Health Service, social care and social security.  Even if Jim and his mates did not understand the specifics Jim wondered why his brand of decent patriotism and his willingness to serve and if needs be die for his country was sneered at by one half of the political class and under-valued by the other half.  A government who seemed so obsessed with balancing the country’s books in the short-term that they were prepared to risk Britain’s security to do it.

Jim was a decent soul who welcomed the growing contingent of foreigners in the Army. If they were willing to fight for his country alongside him and they could take a joke that was fine by Jim.  He also wondered why so many of his senior commanders seemed willing to defend the repeated cuts in uniform but once retired seem all too happy to appear on TV telling all and sundry that the state of the British Army was so parlous it would be defeated in a trice by an enemy with any military capability.  Deep down Jim hoped they were saying the same things whilst in uniform to the prime minister as they seemed so willing to say out of it. Frankly, he doubted it. In any case, these were questions way above Jim’s pay grade.  So, Jim did what he always did and focus on his unit, his men, his ‘oppos’, for when it came to the crunch it was for them and with them he would fight.

Jim gets the call

It was high summer when it started.  Jim got a text message on holiday to report back to barracks immediately. For days now he had been on leave laying on a Cornish beach, building sand-castles with his twin five year old boys and enjoying an occasional bit of body-surfing off Fistral Beach. He had wanted to go abroad on holiday but the family could not afford it. He had been vaguely aware that something was ‘up’. The newspapers and TV were full of ‘experts’ warning about the build-up of Russian forces on NATO’s eastern border. This was not the first time he had heard such ‘stuff’ so Jim had let any clouds of concern he might have drift on by under the high summer sun.  Still, something nagged at him.  For the past two months, the Americans had been embroiled in a full-scale crisis with the Chinese in Asia.  As a front-line combat soldier Jim was a member of a battalion that was part of one of the Army’s new strike brigades, halfway between a ‘light’ and a ‘heavy’ force. Jim knew that in an emergency he would be one of the first to go, after the Hereford Lads (SAS), the Bubbleheads (SBS) and 16 Air Assault Brigade.

Jim left his worried wife with the usual assurances that it was just another scare and that he would be back in no time. But this was different. When he got back to base it was clear he was walking into a full blown crisis. There was none of the usual ‘let’s tick the box’ go through the motions exercise nonsense. This was for real.  Very quickly Jim’s force was joined by other battlegroups being rapidly embarked in Portsmouth for shipment to Germany.  Jim quickly learnt that the original plan had been to trans-ship the force across Europe by rail. However, Europe’s rail system was simply not up to the job of getting even a moderately large force forward deployed quickly enough and the decision had been taken by the ‘brass’ to use requisitioned civilians ships and escort them to Bremerhaven for onward dispatch.

With tensions so high this was a risky course of action. Taking a British-led naval task group into the Baltic Sea with the bulk of Britain’s land strike force to a possible war was replete with danger. He could see the concern on the faces of his senior commanders, most notably the Royal Navy officers charged with escorting the force.  The ‘RN’ simply lacked the anti-submarine and air defence ships and submarines to properly defend such a large and vital convoy.  Worse, Britain’s much vaunted new aircraft carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales were deemed too vulnerable (and too expensive) to be risked given they were so lightly armed and armoured. The simple truth was that the Navy could either escort the convoy or the carriers but not both.  French, German and Dutch ships would also help defend the convoy but the ships of the German and Dutch navies, in particular, lacked vital defensive weapons systems.

At least the politicians were still talking and, as ever, Britain would muddle through as it always did, or so Jim thought.  Once embarked and underway Jim and his men settled down into a sort of routine.  Constant weapons checks and exercising on deck were interrupted for ORP or operation ration packs. They engaged in friendly and not-so-friendly banter with the Royal Marines. As for the Scots…. Still, Jim could smell the apprehension. Some men talked too much, others too little. 

In fact, the voyage to Bremerhaven went surprisingly smoothly. The problems for Jim and his mates began when they arrived.  The Americans had spared what force they could and sent four more armoured brigade combat teams to Europe. The British force arrived just after the Americans such was the disorganisation created by the emergency.  The British force was also under American command because Washington had made it perfectly clear that such was the nature of the emergency and such were the pressures faced by US forces that no way would the Americans rely on that ‘talking shop NATO, as the American president had called it.

For two days Jim and his mates sat off Bremerhaven waiting to disembark. Sitting ducks. When they finally got ashore they waited a further two days before they set off eastwards into Poland.  As they made their way along EU-funded Polish motorways none of which had been designed with military mobility in mind the mood darkened.  News was that the emergency was now a full-blown crisis with war imminent.  Like all soldiers on the eve of combat there was anticipation and resolve allied to a mix of boredom with the journey, uncertainty as to what lay ahead, and the adrenalin-edged smelly expectation that fear generates. Would it happen? Could it happen? Will I survive? What about my family? Above all, will I let myself and the lads down?  Over and over again Jim’s mind mulled what soldiers had mulled since time immemorial. It was a relief simply to go through another drill or check weapons again and again as the monotonous northern Polish countryside lumbered by.  Every now and then he would linger for an already nostalgic moment on the last images he had of his wife and kids on that peaceful Cornish beach.

Jim never saw or heard the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal hypersonic missile that killed him and destroyed his column. The MiG 31 that fired it never even left Russian airspace. Years of cuts had rendered force protection of forward deployed British forces utterly incapable of dealing with such a dangerous adversary in the absence of American forces in strength. They were busy elsewhere. Jim never even got to fire his SA80 L85A1 rifle. Jim just died.

Why Jim died

There is a gnawing predictability to the downward spiral that is British defence policy.  Yes, London may have been politically-savvy getting more defence bad news out on the last day of parliamentary business before the long Brexit-laden summer recess.  In Westminster, it is known as ‘take the trash out day’.  Yes, the usual apologists have been ushered out of the woodwork to suggest another retreat from defence reality is in fact much-needed further rationalisation of the ‘defence base’.  Yes, it is sad that RAF Scampton, home of the famous Red Arrows and the even more famous Dambusters is to close.  History must not be allowed to warp contemporary and future policy, strategy and requirement. No, the politicians can do that all on their strategically-illiterate lonesomes. Still, there is something fittingly poignant about the closure of Scampton and it what it says about the defence ambition of Britain’s leaders.

You see none of the above grips the essential truth that Britain’s failure to close the £20bn plus funding hole in the British defence budget puts the British people, allies, and above all the ‘Jims’ in uniform at ever greater risk. Even those responsible for the cuts admit the world is demonstrably becoming more dangerous by the day.  A world in which deterrence might well in future rely on novel ‘hybrid, ‘cyber’ and quite possibly applications of artificial intelligence, but which right now rests on sufficient cadres of capable armed forces properly-equipped by the democracies they serve. That is now demonstrably NOT so in Britain’s case. This week thus marks perhaps a definitive retreat from realising the baseline force that even as recently as the 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review was deemed to be the minimum force necessary given the threats Britain faces.

As such, the much-vaunted Defence Modernisation Plan is nothing of the sort.  Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson failed to convince either Prime Minister May or Chancellor Phillip Hammond that significant extra funding was needed simply to fulfil the 2015 baseline. It now means that the real Jim and his mates if they ever have to be used at the higher end of conflict will do so at a far higher level of risk than should be the case.  Instead, the ‘DMP’ has become yet another of those now many metaphors and euphemisms Westminster and Whitehall employs for politics before strategy defence cuts.  The ‘we recognise only as much threat as we can afford culture’ that Hammond has imposed on British defence because he fails to realise there is a world beyond the Treasury that try as he might refuses to fit neatly onto his spreadsheet.

In the wake of this further retreat exercising and training will be adjusted to test only those things Britain’s tiny force can do, rather than the things it might be called upon to do.  Worst-case analysis and scenario planning will be abandoned for ‘let’s hope for the best’ planning.  Consequently, the hollowed out force will get ever smaller, and the smaller force will get ever more hollowed out.  

So, whilst much of the population and all of the chattering class are slumbering on the corner of some foreign beach that will be forever England the spin doctors and news managers in the Ministry of Defence and across Whitehall will be congratulating themselves on a successful piece of news management.  That the minister has been protected from the media for another week even if such ‘protection’ comes at the expense of Britain’s fast-declining influence and the abandonment of the first duty of the state – to properly defend its citizens. Naturally, and true to form, Secretary of State for Defence Williamson in an attempt to mask this latest chapter of political shame announced fantastically that Britain would build a 6G fighter called the Tempest. But, of course, it won’t. 

You see ‘Jim’ was not killed by the Kinzhal. He was killed back in 2018 and in the gap the politicians created between the strategic reality Britain’s leaders should be confronting and their repeated and collective refusal to do so. Jim and his mates died trying to close that gap. You see major wars have started unexpectedly because unaccountable illiberal leaders have miscalculated.  Faced with the extreme consequences of their own extreme policies they have convinced themselves that accountable liberal leaders are too politically weak to make the choices that need to be made, even if those choices are not the ones they want to make. Shame on them, but shame also on our own leaders for creating the environment where such folly happens.

Thank God there is always the Americans?

Julian Lindley-French

World Cup 2018: Russia’s Choice

“What is good for the Russian is death for the German [or any non-Russian speaker]”

Old Russian proverb

16 July.

Dear President Putin,

World Cup 2018: Russia’s Choice

Congratulations, Mr President! World Cup 2018 has been a triumph for Russian soft power.  Your country showed a face to the world that for too long few of us have seen.  Russia’s national football team also did your country proud. The aggressive, angry Russia of late was replaced for a few weeks of late by a joyous, efficient and welcoming Russia.  It has been such a pleasure to watch for those of us who have studied Russian history and who have a deep respect for Russia and your people. With the World Cup now completed the glow of success, you are rightly enjoying this morning will soon fade.  Therefore, you have a choice to make this morning as you prepare to meet President Trump: confrontation or co-operation?

What the World Cup demonstrated is that Russia can be great without needing to intimidate its neighbours. Greatness is intrinsic to the Russian people by nature of your history, your literature and your deep, rich culture. And yet, for the past ten years since your invasion of Georgia you have shown us a very different Russia. Since 2008 we have seen snap exercises that threatened EU and NATO members.  In 2014 you occupied Crimea and changed the map of Europe by force and you continue to back a war in eastern Ukraine that has thus far killed more than 10,000 people.  Your armed forces accidentally shot down a civilian airliner killing 298 civilians many of them Dutch, including my wife’s colleague and his family at Tilburg University. As a warning to other defectors, your agents attempted to murder Sergei Skripal and his daughter Julia in Salisbury in my own country. Last week a British citizen, Dawn Sturges, was killed by the Novichok toxin your agents left behind. Thankfully, Britain’s security services are more competent than the idiots who undertook that operation who, I am sure, incurred your displeasure with their cack-handed attack.

The relationship thus remains tense, possibly dangerous. To change that you will need to stop seeing the relationship with the West as a zero sum game in which you can only ‘win’ if we ‘lose’.  The facts clearly signal a ‘reset’ (sorry) would be in Russia’s interests.  Of 67% of Russian exports in 2017 10.9% went to China whilst 31% went to EU and NATO states, with the Netherlands accounting for almost the same amount as the Chinese. The overwhelming bulk of much-needed foreign direct investment to Russia comes from the West, with Germany to the fore, in spite of EU sanctions. As the World Cup has proved there is a different narrative your regime can use to convince your people of its efficacy and legitimacy.

Therefore, with due and humble respect, I would propose the following agenda for your meeting today with President Trump and well beyond. It is an agenda that would no doubt surprise the American president and quite possibly throw him off balance, a gambit for which you have a penchant.  Whilst I would not expect you to admit liability for all the aggressive actions of the Russian state of late you might wish to express regret they happened.  You might also suggest to President Trump that interference in the internal affairs of other states is unfortunate and needs to stop.  There has also been talk of a marked reduction in Russian defence expenditure, although those of us who study these things recognise that the recent ‘downturn’ was little more than an accounting exercise to do with state-run ‘enterprises’.  Still, you could reassure President Trump that you now wish to build on the justified feel-good factor the Russian people are rightly enjoying right now by announcing a marked shift in public investment away from the security state to health, education and infrastructure. Surely, your people deserve this?

It would also help if you could announce an end to the big and very expensive military exercises you have been holding of late, such as the massive and unannounced Northern Fleet exercise last month. Naturally, other issues would need to be high on the agenda, such as an end to your militarisation of the Arctic. In Syria, it would also be seen as a step forward if you expressed a willingness to seek a political solution that ends the suffering of the Syrian people.

Of pressing concern is your massive re-nuclearisation programme of the Russian armed forces and the transformation of Kaliningrad into another of nuclear ‘bastion’.  You could begin this process by agreeing to further new, New START talks with the Americans and re-commit to the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty.  Confidence would be further restored if you also signalled a willingness to respect the modified Conventional Forces Europe Treaty and begin the long march towards a new security treaty for Europe that does not simply (again) seek to exclude the Americans.  After all, President Trump might ‘do his own thing’ anyway.

Above all, you have to accept that you are not faced by a Western Bloc. We in the West wish you and Russia no harm, and your country has friends and allies in Europe willing to work with you in good faith. One only has to look at the Nordstream 2 pipeline project with the Germans to recognise that.  Germany is willing to by-pass the Baltic States, Poland and Ukraine to realise a form of mutual energy dependency that is clearly strategic in both scope and nature. A big step forward could be made immediately if you accepted that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are free, sovereign states with the right to make their own choices, that such choices are not a threat to Russia and your security services behave accordingly.

In conclusion, Mr President, you are at an inflexion point in your relationship with the West and the World Cup has successfully afforded you have a chance to change the dynamic.  If the West was really out to humiliate Russia many states would have boycotted World Cup 2018 and you must not take their decision to attend as weakness but as signal to co-operate.  No-one is out to humiliate Russia because we all know that European security can only be afforded if Russia’s legitimate security concerns are met.  Hopefully, today in Helsinki you can begin the dialogue that will lead to a new political settlement for Europe that will, in turn, bring the peace and prosperity the Russian people rightly deserve. For, no longer is it the case that what is good for the Russian must be death to the German, or indeed the rest of us.

Right now, you think you are winning your self-declared struggle with the West. However, you and I know this is a ‘game’ of power and for all Russia’s many advantages it is a game you will in the end lose.  After all, the four national teams in the semi-final of the World Cup came from EU and NATO members!  

Co-operation or confrontation: it is your choice, Mr President.

Yours respectfully,

Julian Lindley-French

Typhoon Trump and the Brussels NATO Summit

“Two percent is a joke. Four percent is what we should be spending. We [the US] are being played for fools”

President Donald J. Trump, Brussels NATO Summit, 12 July 2018

The Grim Tweeter cameth…

Alphen, Netherlands. 13 July. The Grim Tweeter cameth. First to NATO, then to Britain and next Putin. Typhoon Trump hit NATO on Tuesday evening and by the time he left Europe’s array of small, neat military gardens – pretty but with few flowers or ornaments – were left weed-strewn and Trump-holed. As a minor member of the European strategic ‘elite’, and being in proximity to the Summit at the parallel and excellent NATO Engages conference, my sense was that President Trump did exactly what he came to do but to no particular end. The gathered heads of state and government were so intent on keeping the Alliance ‘thing’ going that they missed (deliberately in some cases) the essential challenge NATO faces. Quite simply, Europeans refuse to consider what could be coming at them in the near future if they still do not become defence serious. The permanently-electioneering President Trump does not look far enough ahead to realise how important the European allies are to America and indeed how they will become more important in the future given worsening American global over-stretch.

What should Europeans actually take-away from the Summit? Two imperatives: European defence investment and the future organisation of European defence. President Trump is essentially right and wrong about NATO. He is right European allies do not spend enough. As the US Senate sensibly concluded this week he is wrong about the value of the Alliance to the US, even if it is only the Washington elite who get that. However, it is European leaders with Germany’s Chancellor Merkel to the fore who face the real challenge. They STILL do not know why they need armed forces and thus cannot explain the need or the sacrifice needed to their respective publics if sound defence and deterrence is to be re-established.

President Trump also has a point about burden-sharing or the lack of it.  The GLOBSEC NATO Adaptation Report states; “The United States provides 75% of Alliance forces and pays some 68% of the cost”. In other words, Europeans provide only 25% of NATO’s contemporary forces.  In 1970 Europeans provided 45% percent of the forces and in 1980 some 76% percent. Some have argued the US contribution to the small NATO budget (22%) should be counted, or those US forces specifically committed to the defence of Europe.  Now, there has been a lot of nonsense uttered this week from people who frankly should know better about this. The reason the bulk of US forces must be counted on the NATO balance sheet is that in an emergency it is the bulk of US forces, if available, that would be committed to the defence of Europe.

Defence outcomes not inputs

Defence outcomes are what matters. That critical little phrase, ‘if available’, should have been the centre-piece of a Summit at which the sharing of burdens was always going to be central.  Unfortunately, Europe’s leaders seem incapable of gripping strategic change and thus fail or refuse to recognise that America’s strategic liabilities are changing.  It is increasingly unlikely that in future the Americans would face one emergency in one theatre at any one time.  Therefore, for a legitimate sharing of twenty-first century Alliance burdens to be realised Europeans would need at the very least policies, forces and resources that could cope with a threat from Russia, a major insurgency and its consequences across the Middle East and North Africa and pressure on NATO’s north. In other words, Europeans need an effective first responder force and this Summit should have committed Europeans to that goal beyond the useful but insufficient ‘let’s make the most of what we are likely to have’ goal of the ‘Four-Thirties’ initiative: thirty battalions, thirty squadrons of aircraft, thirty combat shops ready in thirty days. Even the much-reduced British armed forces could stump up at least half of such a force in an emergency. Russia?

There is simply no point in throwing money at many of Europe’s unreformed armed forces that as yet do not know their place in the wider security-technology architecture that the US is leading.  ‘Four-Thirties’ captures the essential dilemma for the Alliance – the failure by Europeans to meet even limited and quite possibly inadequate ambitions.  Unless the Allies can work patiently and seriously towards a new and shared strategic vision for the Alliance a lot of new money spent now on many European forces would be a complete waste of money.  Such money now would be like pouring money down a black hole of obsolescence and reflect the same input ‘crap’ that destroyed the unity of the Afghanistan campaign. Again, what matters is defence outcomes.

What does America want?

At the Summit President Trump became fixated on the ‘2% by January 2019’ ‘thing’ and even went off into a 4% fantasy. Worse, by being so boorish he actually let the Europeans off the hook upon which they should rightly be hanging because he enabled them to focus on his theatre rather than the substance. By all means e a hard negotiator and warrior for the American taxpayer but first America needs to answer a question itself: what does the US actually want from the European allies?

There could, of course, be an alternative political objective.  If President Trump really is serious about American ‘doing its own thing’ assertive isolationism if Europeans do finally start to get their collective strategic act together he could could then say, “See, you can defend yourselves” and pull American forces out. Given the strategic advantages basing American forces on European soil affords Washington the US would be a big loser from such a move.

To pledge or not to pledge

My final sense of the Summit brings me to my second imperative: the future organisation of Europe’s defence. Irrespective of President Trump Europeans have reached an important juncture.  With the best will in the world the Americans can no longer afford to guarantee European defence unless Europeans commit to far more defence. Therefore, if one looks past the theatrics of Trump the real issue is how much more Europeans are prepared to do collectively for their own defence, how would it be organised and at what cost. 

Germany is central to this dilemma (for that is what it is) because Germany is, well, Germany.  The 2% debate has become snagged on Germany. Now, I am the first to argue that NATO members should fulfil the pledge to spend 2% GDP on defence at the 2014 NATO Wales Summit, for all the clever sophistry employed to pretend the pledge was not a pledge.  To un-snag the Defence Investment Pledge I am prepared to cut Germany (because she is Germany) a special deal. For the sake of European stability, Germany should not spend more on defence than either Britain or France and thus commit to, say, 1.5% GDP per annum. However, for the sake of European defence Germany should also commit to a one-off special budget to enable the desperately needed rehabilitation of the broken Bundeswehr, as well as spending on infrastructure to enable improved military mobility.  Then, and only then, might the enormous gap between German political rhetoric and German defence reality start to be closed and some hope for an autonomous European defence begin to be realised.

and the Grim Tweeter wenteth

President Trump may well have succeeded in bullying some of the more vulnerable allies into moving more quickly towards 2% GDP on defence as agreed in the Defence Investment Pledge. It will not happen by January 2019 as he demanded and America “…will not do its own thing’ when they fail. As for the demand that Europeans spend 4% by 2024, there is little evidence the United States will spend such a sum, let alone a Europe full of ‘social warriors’.

For all the theatre this Summit was never about Donald J. Trump and should always have been about whether Europeans could finally begin the long Tour de France (no historical pun intended) needed to properly consider and respond to their own strategic challenges.  The Grim Tweeter cameth, electrified some in his ‘base’ by giving a bunch of free-riding, pesky, over-dressed, pompous Europeans pieces of his many minds, then the Grim Tweeter wenteth, via Britain to Putin and to who knows where and to what end.

The future NATO?  Two very capable and compatible pillars: North America and Europe.

Julian Lindley-French

Future NATO: Open letter to their Excellencies the gathered heads of state and government of the NATO nations from the GLOBSEC NATO Adaptation Team

Open letter to their Excellencies the gathered heads of state and government of the NATO nations from the GLOBSEC NATO Adaptation Team

9 July 2018

Excellencies,

Adapt our Alliance Now and Together!

NATO is at a crucial decision point.  The Alliance has made significant progress since 2014 in strengthening deterrence against a revisionist Russia and countering threats from the south.  But continued questions about unequal sharing of burdens across the Atlantic threaten to erode the unity and common purpose that are the Alliance's centre of gravity.

It is political solidarity, now and in the future, that is the true defence against any and all adversaries. Only then will the Alliance be armed with the necessary strategic ambition needed to succeed in what is clearly going to be a challenging century for all of the Allies.  Such ambition will only be realized if it is embedded in a new, more balanced transatlantic relationship in which the United States continues to afford its European Allies with the defence guarantee and security support vital to Europe’s stability, in return for European Allies plus Canada, conscious of the pressing and changing needs of American and global security, becoming more able and willing to help meet those needs, as they did in the wake of 9/11.

Commission a Strategy Review

The November 2017 GLOBSEC NATO Adaptation Report, The Future Tasks of the Adapted Alliance is clear: “To lay the basis for long-term adaptation, NATO leaders should commission a strategy review at the July 2018 Summit that could be completed by the seventieth anniversary summit in 2019, and which might be embodied in a new Strategic Concept. NATO needs a forward-looking strategy that sets out how NATO will meet the challenges of an unpredictable and fast-changing world”.

At this week’s NATO Brussels Summit you will collectively confirm and build upon the decisions taken at the 2014 Wales and 2016 Warsaw Summits, including a more robust command structure, enhanced readiness, mobility and reinforcement capacity, and a new training mission in Iraq as part of a wider counter-terrorism agenda. You will also reaffirm the Alliance’s long-term commitment to a Europe whole and free.

However, much more needs to be done -- and quickly -- if a 360-degree NATO is to be realized. An essential part of this is ensuring that NATO's European members, plus Canada, are equipped to shoulder greater responsibility for transatlantic security as true partners for the United States.

Build a Twenty-First Century NATO

As NATO nears its seventieth birthday, the Alliance risks falling behind the pace of political change and technological developments across the great drivers of mega-change, including new technologies like cyber and artificial intelligence, disinformation and other "hybrid" threats, as well as failing states, violent extremism and uncontrolled migration.  All allies need to take action to meet the pressing need for further organizational and internal reform to enable a properly agile and modernized Alliance and to better prepare NATO not only to meet the many technology and affordability challenges but to master them -- from hybrid warfare to hyperwar.

Strengthen NATO Defence

Fifty years ago (December 1967) former Belgian Prime Minister Pierre Harmel delivered his seminal report to the North Atlantic Council on the Future Tasks of the Alliance. The report called for a new politico-military foundation to be established based on the equitable sharing of risk and cost, and the pursuit of a two-track strategy based on preservation of defence and deterrence on the one hand, and dialogue with Moscow on the other.

Harmel affirmed that NATO is and will always remain a defensive alliance. However, Alliance defence must be sound, credible, well-resourced and proportionate to the threats the Alliance faces. At the military-strategic level, collective security and collective defence are merging and growing in both scale and intensity. To meet that core challenge, NATO must be prepared, fit and able to act across the seven domains of grand conflict: air, sea, land, cyber, space, information and knowledge.

The Harmel Report was of its time but its guiding principles made the peace we enjoy today. That peace, however, can only be ensured and assured over the longer term if we confront the threats, both internal and external, that the transatlantic community faces today.  If NATO were to fail because of short-term political frictions, the loss would not only be felt by the Allies but by freedom-loving peoples the world over, as they could no longer rely on this anchor of legitimate security.

Forge a New Transatlantic Relationship

Therefore, what is needed and what our people are expecting from you, our leaders is the will to pursue and achieve a renewed high political consensus and a strengthened transatlantic covenant. Such a covenant must be based on shared values, solidarity and a clear purpose for our Alliance in this new and fast-evolving security environment.  As part of such a noble effort, the European Allies must properly commit to making a greater leap forward than hitherto for the sake of their own security and that of all the Allies on both sides of the Atlantic. Such ambition must be central to and inform the overarching goal of the new strategy review that we recommend be launched at the Summit.

Given the changing strategic context, the primary challenge and responsibility facing you all at the Summit will be to impart a renewed political purpose and momentum to the Alliance, in which all twenty-nine Allies commit to do their part.  Credible military capability and capacity is, of course, vital to meeting such challenges. That can only come if all Allies fulfil their commitments and share a common vision for the future of the world’s most important alliance.

Therefore, the undersigned urge the Heads of State and Government to commission at the Summit a Strategy Review that will guide Allies and NATO in the reforming spirit of Harmel, to adapt our Alliance to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century with confidence and purpose.

At the Brussels meeting, you will together have the opportunity to afford NATO’s citizens the strategic reassurance they need and crave from San Francisco to Vancouver, from Riga to Rome, from Amsterdam to Ankara. Seize that opportunity!

In wishing you every success at the Summit, we remain

Yours respectfully,

John R. Allen, General, USMC (Ret.), Commander of the NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) 2011-2013

Knud Bartels, General (Ret.), Danish Chief of Defence Staff 2009-2011, Chairman of the NATO Military Committee 2011-2015

Philip M. Breedlove, General (Ret.) Supreme Allied Commander, Europe 2013-2016

Ian Brzezinski, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense 2001-2005, Resident Senior Fellow, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, Atlantic Council

Giampaolo di Paola, Admiral (ret.), Chairman of the NATO Military Committee 2008-2011, Minister of Defence of Italy 2011-2013

Alena Kudzko, Deputy Research Director, GLOBSEC, Bratislava

Wolf Langheld, General (Ret.), Commander Allied Joint Forces Headquarters, Brunssum 2010-2012

Julian Lindley-French, Professor, Senior Fellow, Institute for Statecraft London, Fellow Canadian Global Affairs Institute and Vice-President, Atlantic Treaty Association 2014-2016

James G. Stavridis, Admiral (Ret.), Dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and Supreme Allied Commander, Europe 2009-2013

Stefano Stefanini, Ambassador (Ret.), Permanent Representative of Italy to NATO and Diplomatic Advisor to the President of Italy, Giorgio Napolitano 2007-2010. Non-resident Senior Fellow, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, Atlantic Council

James J. Townsend, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense 2009-2016, Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security

Tomas Valasek, Ambassador (Ret.), Permanent Representative of Slovakia to NATO 2013-2017, Director of Carnegie Europe, Brussels

Robert Vass, President, GLOBSEC, Bratislava

Alexander Vershbow, Ambassador (Ret.), NATO Deputy Secretary General 2012-2016, US Assistant Secretary of Defense 2009-2012, Ambassador to NATO, Russia and South Korea 1997-2008, Distinguished Fellow, Atlantic Council

Vassal-Plus-Plus? The Humbling of Britain towards the end of May

“Anyone defending the proposal we have just agreed will find it like trying to polish a turd”.

Boris Johnson, British Foreign Secretary,

6 July 2018

Brexit Mayhem

9 July. Alphen, Netherlands. The Oxford English Dictionary defines vassal “as a holder of land by feudal tenure on conditions of homage and allegiance”. David Davis’s resignation had the air of inevitability about it. Forced to front up government policy in which he clearly did not believe and to be the fall guy for policy made elsewhere he had to walk. Last Friday’s Cabinet meeting at Chequers the country estate of the British prime minister was the final straw in Davis’s estrangement from May’s civil service-led filleting of Brexit. The Friday meeting also marked the Brexit humbling of Britain and the true beginning of the end of Theresa May’s premiership. And, the moment when I finally lost all respect for the elite who have run my country so disastrously. For two years now I have watched this Brexit farce. Last month I even heard ministers seriously debating whether Britain could adopt the Lichtenstein model for its future relationship with the EU? Britain? A top five world economic and military power? Lichtenstein with nukes… without the money!

Yes, I know, negotiating Brexit with the EU was always going to be difficult and the most that can be said for the May plan, such as it is, is that if the EU accepts it some 20% of the British economy would pretty much return to the original 1973 idea of a Common Market, albeit without the membership. It was the idea of a common market that was then sold to the British people. I say ‘sold’ for even a cursory glance at the 1957 Treaty of Rome and its commitment to “ever closer union” would have revealed the gap between what the British people were told and the real ambition of the European Project. It is an elite lie that has dogged Britain’s membership ever since and led eventually to Brexit.

As for the Brexit negotiations themselves, the May plan is what you get when one side does not believe in its negotiating mission and the other is led by ideological fanatics.  The negotiations, if you can call them that, were bound to be difficult the moment the Commission were put in charge of on the EU side, hell-bent on delivering a punishment beating to Britain “pour encourager les autres” a la Voltaire, and to teach the British people a lesson about power for an egregious act of democracy.  At best, Britain’s position throughout has been, “would you awfully mind if…? No? OK then”. The Commission’s lines was, “resistance is futile”. At worse, there has been collusion between Britain’s negotiators and the Commission to destroy Brexit.

Perhaps the 2016 Brexit referendum will come to be seen as the last meaningful vote in Europe, the last meaningful act of democracy when we the little people were permitted to vote on a big issue. Or perhaps not, given the 2016 referendum now seems to have become simply yet another powerless act of people powerlessness. Revenge really is a dish served cold.

How did this happen?

Theresa May has patently not been up to the job of Brexit.  Some in the Conservative Party had hoped for Maggie Thatcher reborn, they got Maggie Maybe instead. The plan she presented on Friday when she, at last, imposed some leadership over her rabble of a Cabinet, was a much diluted version of the plan she should have presented two years ago at the beginning of the negotiations, together with serious preparations for no deal. Rather, from Lancaster House to Florence to Mansion House her dithering has made matters far worse than they needed to be, compounded by an appallingly ill-judged 2016 general election.

The Whitehall Establishment set out to stymie Brexit and by hook or crook captured a prime minister that shorn of her own advisers had little or no idea what to do herself.  David Cameron used to call her the ‘submarine’ because she rarely ever surfaced. Now we know why. Things were clearly going awry with Brexit when Phillip Hammond, the anointed representative of the City of London on Earth went quiet. Job done! Brexit blocked. No need to say anything. Let the Brexiteers fume and fumble for they had been successfully marginalised.  As for the Brexiteers, blow hards from beginning to end.

As to be expected Oliver Robbins, May's Chief Negotiator, failed to land a single hit on either Merkel-backed Barnier or Selmayr.  He must have enjoyed a certain Mandarin schadenfreude (appropriate word in this context) when he reported to ministers a few days ago that a bad deal was the only possible deal.  Historians I am sure will one day tell the story how Whitehall and Brussels colluded to kill Brexit and inflict on the British voter the same fate that was imposed on past ballot box dissenters in France, Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands.  Sadly, and yet again, this disaster reveals a London elite Establishment that does not believe in Britain or the British people. They are so imbued with a culture of managing British decline that they do just that, manage British decline…and not very well.

What will happen now to Britain? 

This is a defining moment in the centuries-long story of Britain as a serious power. Or, rather, it may well be the end of it. Maggie Maybe’s rejection of a desperately-needed increase in defence expenditure was about far more than defence.  It was about an elite that sees Britain as Little Britain, no longer serious about Britain’s place in the world, preferring instead to see foreign and security policy as little more than strategic virtue-signalling. A place in which plane-less aircraft carriers are offered as symbols of ‘might’ but where in reality real policy, power and influence – the stuff with which democracies preserve the legitimate peace – are but chimeras of pretence.

My reasons for campaigning for Remain in spite of my concerns about the EU and democracy have been well-documented in these pages.  It was and is my firm belief that Britain should stay and fight for a Europe of Nations a la de Gaulle, that dangerous geopolitics demands Britain fully commit to the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe to confirm the freedoms they won so painfully during the Cold War, including freedom of movement.  That Europe is simply too close and too important for Britain to lack either a voice or influence over it.  Above all, at the time of the referendum, I wondered if the British elite was up to the task of Brexit. The answer is clearly not. Rather, the Brexit now on offer is a hokey-cokey Brexit leaving Britain neither in nor out of the EU – vassal plus, plus.

The moment the Commission signalled they were determined to give Britain and the British a punishment beating the only real options on the table were to fight or capitulate. There was no third way. If led with vigour and accomplishment Britain, a major trading power and security actor could have fought for a far better deal than this. Britain had a lot of cards to play but Maggie Maybe refused to use any of them. Barnier, on the other hand, used every trick in the book to force Britain into servitude, most notably the tail wagging dog gambit of the inner-Irish border.  It is now hard to understand just what May, the Department for [not] Exiting the European Union, David Davis, Liam Fox and Oliver Robbins have being doing at great taxpayer’s expense for the past two years. It would have been far cheaper simply to have surrendered early.

Now, I fear for the future of my once-great country. The humbling of Britain and its submission to Brussels means that rather than ‘taking back control’ the real power in the land will not be in it.  Far from returning sovereignty to Westminster and Whitehall, this Brexit will simply confirm that Brussels is really the boss over which no British voter will have any control. Jacob Rees Mogg is a politician I respect for his courage, but he is not to my taste.  He reeks of a warm beer, nostalgia for a mist-bound lost England which never existed that whilst comforting to some offers little on the way of hope for the New Britain that needs to be built if social and political cohesion is ever to be restored. Still, ‘JRM’ is right about one thing – this Brexit reduces Britain to a vassal state and in so doing again leads one to question the future of the United Kingdom. Why would the Scots stay in a Union ‘governed’ by a Westminster that has proved itself incapable of governing Britain? What is the point of a Union that has to all intents and purposes ceded control of Northern Ireland to the Brussels-Dublin axis?

What does this Brexit mean for Europe?

The implications for Europe are also profound. This week Donald Trump will demand more of his European allies at the NATO Summit in Brussels.  He is likely to get little more than a metaphorical ‘so what’ shrug of the shoulders from Theresa May, in spite of last week’s letter from Secretary of Defense Mattis demanding Britain do more if London wants to remain America’s ‘partner of choice’.  You see, May has not just failed to deliver the Brexit she promised, her lack of strategic vision is breaking Britain’s strategic spirit.  Unless a new leader is found and fast I fear that my country will retreat behind its nuclear shield, into itself, and effectively disengage so as to continue with the destructive navel-gazing that has already done so much damage.  Most of the British people will hate this deal, or rather the final deal which emerges after May is forced by the EU to concede yet more ground.  They will hate May for it, but they will also hate ‘Europe’ too.

The EU? The Brexit behaviour and attitude of Barnier, Selmayr and Juncker have simply confirmed to many that unless the democracies check the Commission Europe is on the road to some form of bureaucratic dictatorship. Encouraged by the humbling of Britain the Commission will no doubt interpret the existing treaties ever more in its favour and play the member-states off against each other as it seeks to grab ever more power in the name of ever more ‘Europe’. The Commission will also use the rubber-stamp European Parliament to legitimise its power grab and condemn as ‘populists’ all and any who dare to dissent.  One senior Commission official once told me that my dissent was in danger of damaging his life work as if I had no right to challenge him even though his life work had enormous implications for my life and my freedom. The new Euro-Aristocracy?

What will happen next?

Discord is next. May’s Brexit deal will satisfy no-one – Brexiteer or Remainer alike. For the next decade, ‘Europe’ will remain THE toxic political issue of British politics. The high, hard Remainers who engineered this situation – high politics, high bureaucracy and big business – will no doubt hope that the deal is so bad the British people will eventually clamour to go back into the EU. The Brexiteers will hope that a real leader emerges that finally has the political courage to follow through on the Referendum vote and deliver Brexit 2.0, at whatever the cost. My bet is on the former. There is, however, two big imponderables: the state of the EU in a decade and for that matter Britain.  One thing is clear, the relationships between Britain and many of its closest European allies have been damaged profoundly and will it take a long-time for trust to be rebuilt on both sides.

Here’s the twist. For all its imperfections a failure to prepare for any alternative means the ‘turd’ on offer is now the only ‘turd’ in town, which is why the Brexiteers, in the end, supported it. The Chequers meeting was timed to take place on the eve of Europe’s long slumber so officials can now stitch up a fait accompli.  The only hope left is that THIS plan is accepted by the EU in its entirety and quickly. The alternative is no deal. The challenge for the other EU member-states is to call off the Commission attack dogs, with Germany to the fore. That Brussels consciously avoids any triumphalism. That Britain does not retreat into an enormous post-Brexit sulk. That both sides make enormous efforts not to humiliate Britain and to make the plan work. You see there is a world beyond Brexit for ALL Europeans and it is getting more dangerous by the day. It was that observation that made me decide in 2016 that on balance I would campaign for Remain. I have not changed my mind.   

Statecraft, for the most part, is the art of making bad deals work. As Guy Verhofstadt has rightly said, “the devil is in the detail”. There is one hell of a devil also in the politics of all this. May’s plan may be the only deal on offer, but there is another game in town. Maybe, just maybe, last week’s letter from German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer questioning the Commission’s hard-line is the start of what should be the real war of which Brexit was but a forlorn battle: the taking back of control by the EU member-states from the European Commission.

Vassal plus, plus - the humbling of Britain at the end of May. What a bloody mess! Let’s hope England win the World Cup. C’mon England!

Julian Lindley-French